To actually not like my Mum

[Mrchubster]

I have always had a strange relationship with Mum. Although I don't doubt she loves me, since my parents divorce 25 years ago, it's like our roles have reversed. I'm the mother, she's the child.

Approx 10 years ago she moved 150 miles to be near us and as she was retiring it made sense. At the same time I was pregnant with DS and thought how lovely it would be to have her close.

How wrong was I?! She is massively needy with a big dose of passive aggression. Everything is "poor me". She has made very few friends since moving here and so her whole world seems to revolve around d me and my DCs. Trouble is I don't enjoy her company, we have nothing in common and she only talks about herself, doesn't want to put herself out. She can be very critical of other people which I find wearing.. I can tell her something quite important and it will go in one ear and out the other. She'll then phone 2 days later wanting to discuss the issue. Well, no thanks I've moved on!

If I confront her behaviour she gets all teary I'm on my own, no one cares about me" etc...

Sadly I alsoI find her embarrassing company to be with. At a recent family event she spoke over everyone, talked about me as though I wasn't in the room and generally lacked any social skills.

It's now at the point where I don't tell her anything personsal because she just doesn't listen. It's a standing joke with me and DH that no matter what you tell her, she'll change the subject! I look at her sometimes and wonder how the hell we're related!

I feel angry, sad and guilty in equal portions. Guilty that I encouraged her to move here ( although I have said if she wanted to move back I'd be fine), and because I shouldn't feel like that towards my mum.
Sad because I would so love a close relationship with her (am quite envious of friends who are close to their mums). Angry that she just doesn't get it.

Her whole life seems to revolve around me and the DCs which I find suffocating. I have given her info on the local WI, church, gardening clubs but she's not interested. She has made very little effort to make any friends.

Her health isn't good, mainly caused by poor lifestyle (which admittedly I'm not very sympathetic about) and so she's doing less and less, becoming more dependant. I feel such a huge weight of responsibility to be everything to her, it has the opposite effect of driving me away.

DB lives 300 miles away and keeps his distance for exactly the same reasons.

She's 70 btw. I know I should accept her for who she is and get so frustrated with myself for having any expectations of a close mother/daughter bond. Sorry to bang on

Dear GOD, Red!

My mum has her NPD moments and we haven't been close for years, but she would be horrified at something like that (she's quite kind when she isn't being bitchy, if that makes sense). That's ust mind-boggingly cruel, how awful for you.

Sorry. I didn't mean to hijack the thread but it feels good to vent.

Sorry OP but thank you for starting the thread for all the others like us out there who do not live the dream of shopping and hanging out with Mummy.

No hijacking at all Red...... It has been so reassuring that I'm not the only daughter out there feeling this way.

I had a dog when I was a child and I came home from school one day and he was gone I ran around looking for him and she said 'I had him put down this afternoon'. I was truly hysterical and to this day she has never said sorry or explained.

Wow. My mother did that to me when I was a child. Exactly as you've described. She also has all the other traits in the OP. We've now been NC for 3 years. Best 3 years of my life.

Mine waited til I was on honeymoon (for my wedding which she refused to attend because my hen do was just me and my bridesmaids and that wasn't acceptable because "the hen do is about the mother"...) to give away my childhood cat and have the dog put down.

Crikey there are some f*ed up women about there!

I'm just at these stories!

The two telling points for me:

As someone said:

having a uterus doesn't make a good parent,

Even rosemary west had children.

Those societal narratives of perfect caring mothers and phrases like 'you only have one mother', most make it doubly difficult for people with these horrid relationships with their awful mothers!

Why did these women choose to have kids? Was it for company (they fell out wirh everyone else). Admiration? Attention from others?

"Why did these women choose to have kids? Was it for company (they fell out wirh everyone else). Admiration? Attention from others?"

Well, in our case my mother had kids because she was lonely (she has no friends) , so yes, she had kids for company. However, when I was about 7 she lost interest - I guess she realised by then that we weren't just going to fulfil her needs/make her look good all the time.

So yes, some very immature women have children for all the wrong reasons. It happens.

"Like when I was due with my dd, she managed to fracture a vertebrae whilst baking, and I had to take her to A&E and sit with her through her visit etc. It makes me sound heartless but the timing is uncanny every time."

This thread is chilling.

You really think your mothers deliberately break bones just to get at you?

'I had to take her to A&E' - poor you.

You could have just left her on the pavement to drag herself there.

My mum is also 'needy', particularly since my dad died. She's lonely. A lot of middle aged and elderly women are, and it can make them difficult people to be around. She goes through phases of being mean about people, of talking about herself and her friends obsessively. And she's part of a wealthy generation of pensioners who have very self-indulgent lifestyles, and really don't 'get' how hard things are for everyone else. The watch words here are 'family' and 'tolerance' and 'love'.

I feel really, really sorry for your mothers. They're not allowed to be lonely or mentally frail, or selfish or imperfect. They're not allowed to be human, because it's boring and inconvenient for you.

How about feeling sorry for some of the women on this thread who have grown up with abusive narcissistic horrors who have treated them appallingly?

We don't have to tolerate cruelty or abuse just because the abuser gave birth to us.

I visited my dm yesterday, today I'm getting the silent treatment for some unknown misdemeanour
Probably that six hours listening to her talking about herself wasn't long enough, that I didn't show enough interest in her very minor day surgery, that I didn't agree with her political views as I'm now too 'upmyself' and have a different opinions from hers.
Never mind we drove over 200 miles on one of dhs rare days off, I had to arrange dog sitters, buy and bring all our food as she can't be bothered to make a few sandwiches.
She's so bitter that I have a happy marriage as my df was a alcoholic bully who treated us both like crap.
Who would be jealous of their only child, its bizarre to me.

I feel really, really sorry for your mothers. They're not allowed to be lonely or mentally frail, or selfish or imperfect. They're not allowed to be human, because it's boring and inconvenient for you.

I think there are big differences between some of the mothers described on this thread. Some could definitely benefit from a little more understanding from their offspring but some of what is described on here is vile behaviour and nobody could be blamed for resenting or walking away from it.

The OP has said herself that her DM is not malicious.

Let's not tar everybody with the same brush.

"We don't have to tolerate cruelty or abuse just because the abuser gave birth to us."

You are victims of child abuse?

Or abuse as an adult because your mum is boring, insensitive and lonely?

Seriously, try reading the whole thread. Some posters have just described bored and boring people but plenty of others have described emotional abuse. and in many cases of course it goes back to childhood

to those of us who get this thread: try and ignore those who don't get it. There are people who will never understand, and you're not going to convince them because they've never walked in your shoes or experienced what you've experienced, so don't even bother. You know the truth. Hold on to that. Some people are unable to imagine what others' lives are like.

I have many horror stories I could tell, but I can't be arsed explaining and I don't have to. I know what I know.

Crikey, how is it IRL I've never met anyone with a mother like mine but MN is heaving with people with the same experience.

My mother has spent the last 5 years emotionally blackmailing me into living while for most of that time still only bothering to see me about 6 times a year. Dh and I are now moving away and aren't planning on telling her until the last minute. She has a long history of about every health/emotional issue under the sun, all of which are someone else's fault/problem. Her relationship with my father is bat shit crazy and I'm her chosen confidante for her endless rants about how much she hates him. Her world is shrinking more and more, she has no interest in doing anything or going anywhere and only talks about an increasingly narrow range of topics. Her behaviour and lifestyle is getting more bonkers (sleeping all day, staying up all night, then complaining she doesn't sleep well, bizarre obsessions.) There's no other family and I dread the inevitable increasing practical dependency.

She won't even contemplate a conversation about moving to be nearer us if we move- she just tells me that she hates all her options and what she wants is a big house and a big family she can live with right, cos that's going to happen.

Everyone else's job in life is to make her happy, but she doesn't give two hoots for theirs.

I feel for you op. The responsibility and expectation is exhausting.

Crikey, how is it IRL I've never met anyone with a mother like mine but MN is heaving with people with the same experience.

My mother has spent the last 5 years emotionally blackmailing me into living while for most of that time still only bothering to see me about 6 times a year. Dh and I are now moving away and aren't planning on telling her until the last minute. She has a long history of about every health/emotional issue under the sun, all of which are someone else's fault/problem. Her relationship with my father is bat shit crazy and I'm her chosen confidante for her endless rants about how much she hates him. Her world is shrinking more and more, she has no interest in doing anything or going anywhere and only talks about an increasingly narrow range of topics. Her behaviour and lifestyle is getting more bonkers (sleeping all day, staying up all night, then complaining she doesn't sleep well, bizarre obsessions.) There's no other family and I dread the inevitable increasing practical dependency.

She won't even contemplate a conversation about moving to be nearer us if we move- she just tells me that she hates all her options and what she wants is a big house and a big family she can live with right, cos that's going to happen.

Everyone else's job in life is to make her happy, but she doesn't give two hoots for theirs.

I feel for you op. The responsibility and expectation is exhausting.

Heavens. I was whinging on here yesterday about my slightly narcissistic, very needy mother who can't take responsibility for herself. So many of you have the same issues.

all round.

minifingers: if the watchwords here are family, tolerance and love - why does that only ever go one way?

My mother is one of the most self-centred, unloving, viciously bitchy and intolerant people I've ever met. All the other ones I've met weren't family, and I got to disappear out of their lives as fast as I could. Because my mother is family, I keep visiting once a year (from the other side of the world), phoning her twice a week, sending her presents and cards. Nothing I ever do for the woman is sufficient. Everything is met with bitchiness. Thank god I only have one mother, I couldn't stand having more than one.

Under those circumstances, why on earth should genetics make a difference to how I feel?

could these mums be on the autistic spectrum?

Possibly,but i'm on the spectrum myself and with mine I think there is something else - a total absence of compassion and a presence of cruelty iyswim?

StatisticallyChallenged - I agree. Me too.

wizzywig - yes, some of what's described above is akin to the tunnel vision/ self-centred worldview of someone with ASD. However, as pointed out above, most people with ASD don't actually lack compassion or sympathy or even empathy - they just have great difficulty expressing it appropriately. ASD is kind of like being a stereo system with the balance knobs all tuned to funny positions (showing age here - probably noone has those these days), where sensory inputs and behavioural outputs are all messed up, too much signal or not enough. The odd behaviours of ASD stem partly from that input-output mess, trying to cope with the world and damp down/ramp up signals - and partly from the focussed thinking-down-straight-lines/ lack of lateral thinking. However, underlying all that, there is often a fairly normal state of understanding of the world, even if the behaviours don't really signal that.

The only mother I've ever met who is definitely on the autistic spectrum has quite messed-up outputs, and sadly a rather lowly image of herself because others are so unkind about her; but she herself is lovely and kind, enthusiastic, and trying very hard to be nice (even if a bit overinvested in things generally to the point of being a bit intense). Her daughter - also on the spectrum, a bit more reserved, more intelligent and self-aware - quite rightly adores her mum.

I think what I'm trying to say here is that autism often presents as over-invested or under-invested, and people can come across as quite boring, but they're not actually needy, selfish gits any more or less than the average population.

I think a lot of the bored-and-boring, needy, narcissistic behaviour has much more to do with our mothers' generation having been brought up with a self-image that centred around being good and pretty and compliant, i.e. self-defining completely by others' perceptions of appearance, rather than by having a sense of self-direction/self-efficacy. Girls got told they were pretty by their fathers/by boys, or got told they were being good for their teachers. Boys got told they were doing stuff well or badly, that they were strong or weak, that their behaviour was appropriate or not. That has a huge impact on what you see as valid behaviour - women end up needing compliments and approval of their appearance to know that they're actually doing anything. Ones of my mother's age also self-defined strongly in apposition to second-wave feminists (Germaine Greer et al), missing all the 1960s/70s points about empowerment.

Now the world has moved on, and we rightly see this kind of "pretty princess" self-image as empty and shallow. Women my mother's age kind of missed the 80s and 90s doing the ironing and looking after their aged, infirm elderly relatives. Now they find themselves with daughters who see the world differently - they feel lost, and so start trying to find their feet in the only way they know - i.e. by being needy and wanting compliments and approval.

Explanation, not justification. My mother still drives me mental, even if i try to have some understanding of where she's coming from. I had to learn to be a well-adjusted adult with the help of NHS counsellors and psychiatrists and antidepressants, because my worldview was so screwed up by my mother's behaviour. I tend to think that if I could recognise the need to change and fix things, maybe she could too...

I wish I had a normal mum

I was giving my mum a lift somewhere earlier - so trapped alone in the car with her for 30 mins while she drones on and on m. She doesn't like to leave any silence. I was so happy when we arrived and I could drop her off and leave.

When we go to visit MIL she gets angry with me abs sends passive aggressive texts.

I tell her as little information as possible as she is extremely nosy - and will use anything against me in the future

She looks down on other people - but is extremely jealous that MIL has a bigger house than her's.

I think my mother would define herself as a feminist, and in some respects she is but in other ways...not so much. She had no issues with calling me a slut for going out in a short skirt for example. I don't think she so much missed the 80s and 90s ironing, as missed it with her head up her own backside

You've expressed the ASD side well I think. I think there is a misconception that people with ASD are generally selfish/boring/drone on endlessly/lack empathy and a lot of the time it just isn't true. Personally I can have issues interpreting motives, and I might not understand why somebody feels a certain way - it's like an instinct for some of the more subtle emotions is a bit dulled so I won't intuitively understand why people are behaving a certain way or what's motivating them. But if I do understand an emotion I very definitely empathise. And sometimes I just need time to think about a scenario or conversation to be able to figure out what's gone on. Selfishness is another one which I don't think is accurate for many - sometimes in an attempt to empathise I can end up talking about myself too much but it's because I'm trying to show that I understand. It can come across wrong though. If anything I can be too generous, too helpful on occasion and overstep the mark without meaning too.

My mother is different. She'll help people out loads, but where I will just do it because I want to help she will do it and tell THE WORLD how helpful she is, how hard it is for her, how busy/tired/exhausted she is. She's extremely martyrish, and whenever you suggest a solution which would mean she didn't have to do so much it gets turned down with "no, no it's fine, I don't mind." It's very attention seeking.

She also has little sympathy for other people. My brother died a couple of years ago, and they were estranged at the time and had been for about 2 years. Now I completely and utterly understand that losing her son must have been horrendous but I'd also lost my older sibling who was more like a father to me. We were very very close. Every day for months I'd get calls from her that seemed designed to make me cry or to go on about how much she was grieving/crying/distraught, but she seemed to care little about how I was feeling. Even DH picked up on it. She'd call and say things like "I saw this story in the paper and was half way through dialling X's number to tell him about it then realised I couldn't"...except she hadn't picked up a phone to him for 2 bloody years before hand so how come she seemed to be about to do it every second day. She wrote a little speech to have read out at the funeral and the entire thing was about how she felt, about her pain, her grief. Not about DB or what he was like, no "here's a moment we shared" stories. Normal in a eulogy type situation to have some "can't believe he's gone" type comments but this was different. Hard to explain, sorry.